iSort

Intelligent self-organising transport

Project brief

ARC Discovery Project DP0878119, 2008–10

Project summary

Intelligent Transportation Systems(ITS) are focusing on sensor observations and information for local actions, such as driving assistance or congestion avoidance, subsumed in the autonomous vehicle and telematics. Global actions, eg, wayfinding and trip planning, are frequently ignored. This is where the current project begins. We are studying self-organising transport for managing global decisions. Self-organising transport is realised by a mobile sensor network composed of intentional and social agents. We develop computational models of the ontologies of various agents in urban ITS with the aim to let them communicate locally and act globally. This paradigm shift enables an ad-hoc transport management design that is inherently ubiquitous, real-time, and independent from any external infrastructure. The design is tested in simulations, and demonstrated in a mobile sensor network.

From previous research (Winter and Nittel 2006; Raubal et al. 2007), an intelligent self-organising transport network is characterised by a cycle of two processes: a synchronised negotiation process and a travelling process. In the negotiation process, different ontologies of the agents have to be overcome in an ad-hoc manner. In the travelling process, agents cross over multiple modes of transportation with different degrees of freedom and autonomous, flexible behaviour in response to local transport demand or supply. Current work considers the fundamental ontology model of communication between ITS and wayfinders, and collaboration between multiple modes of transportation (Winter and Wu 2008).

News

  • June 2010: Third International Workshop on Computational Transportation Science accepted to be hold in conjunction with ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2010(follow-up of Dagstuhl Seminar).
  • June 2010: Han Wang›s paper for the ITS World Congress is accepted. His simulation source code is available (zip file).
  • March 2010: Dagstuhl Seminar on Computational Transportation Science, co-chairedwith Monika Sester (Hannover), Ouri Wolfson (Chicago) and Glenn Geers(Sydney).
  • December 2009: Matthias Braun’s paper appears: Braun, M.; Winter, S., 2009: Ad-Hoc Solution of the Multi-Commodity-Flow-Over-Time Problem. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 10 (4): 658–667.
  • December 2009: Yunhui Wu and Aisan Kazerani presented her papers at the 10th International Conference on Geocomputation, Sydney.
  • November 2009: Han Wang submitted his master thesis on The Strategy of Utilizing Taxi Empty Cruise Time to Solve the Short Distance Trip Problem, proving the potential of intelligent self-organising transport to support more sustainable transport solutions and developing a new market for the taxi industry.
  • October 2009: Denise Peters (Cognitive Systems, Bremen) visited our group, developing a joint paper on landmark identification from wayfinders in virtual environments.
  • September 2009: Nina Dethleffs (Linguistics, Bremen) visited our group, developing a joint paper on the generation of verbal route descriptions.
  • Together with Ouri Wolfson (Chicago), Monika Sester (Hannover) and Glenn Geers (NICTA) I got funding for a Dagstuhl Seminar on Computational Transportation Science (taking place in March 2010). My participation is based on the current ARC project.
  • June 2009: Paper presented at AGILE 2009, Hannover.
  • February 2009: Yunhui Wu’s PhD project webpage published.
  • December 2008: Yunhui Wu receives the Best Presentation Award at W2GIS 2008 for her presentation of the paper of Winter and Wu, Towards a Conceptual Model of Talking to a Route Planner.
  • December 2008: Stephan Winter gives a keynote at the 10th Brazilian Symposium on Geographic Information Science on Spatial Cognitive Engineering.
  • December 2008: Marconi Leung joins the project for a 10-week Melbourne Research Institute Research Summer Experience.
  • September 2008: Poster presented at Spatial Cognition 2008; Workshop Computational Models of Place chaired at GIScience 2008.
  • September 2008: Aisan Kazerani joins the project; her research topic will be the consideration of variations of transport demand in the simulation.
  • August 2008: Paper for the W2GIS 2008 Conference in Shanghai accepted.
  • August 2008: Yunhui Wu receives the John Melvin Memorial 2008 Scholarship. Her project was judged, by the School of Engineering, to be contributing the greatest benefit to society.
  • July 2008: Yunhui Wu receives an ESRI Travel Scholarship for the participation at the Spatial Cognition Conference 2008, Freiburg, Germany
  • July 2008: Stephan Winter receives the distinguished U. V. Helava Award 2008, together with co-authors Martin Raubal (UCSB), Sven Tessmann (U Münster) and Christian Gaisbauer (TU Wien) for a paper laying the ground for the current project.
  • February 2008: Yunhui Wu joins the project to do her PhD in the user interface of ISORT / route planners.
  • January 2008: Project in the headlines: ARC Storytime January 2008

Publications and reports

  • Winter, S.; Wu, Y., 2008: Towards a Conceptual Model of Talking to a Route Planner. In: Bertolotto, M.; Li, X.; Ray, C. (Eds.), W2GIS 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5373. Springer, Berlin, pp. 107–123. (Best Presentation Award)
  • Wu, Y., 2008: Opening a Dialog with Navigation Systems. In: Bertel, S.; Ragni, M. (Eds.): Spatial Cognition 2008: Doctoral Colloquium. SFB/TR8, Freiburg, Germany, pp. 9–12.
  • Wu, Y.; Winter, S., 2008: Communicating with Navigation Systems about Places. In: Hölscher, C. (Ed.), Spatial Cognition 2008: Poster Session. SFB/TR8, Freiburg, Germany, pp. 81–84.
  • Winter, S.; Wu, Y., 2008: The ‘Spatial Turing Test’ (PDF). In: Navratil, G. (Ed.), Colloquium for Andrew Frank. Geoinfo Series. Institute for Geoinformation and Gartography, Technical University Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
  • Ni, F., 2008: Interacting with a Simulation of an Ad-Hoc Shared Ride System. Technical Report, Department of Geomatics, The University of Melbourne, 22 pages. Animation (4MB)
  • Reilly, D., 2008: Ontology Mismatches in Some Route Planning Systems in Melbourne. Technical report, Department of Geomatics, The University of Melbourne, 23 pages.

Prior publications

  • Winter, S.; Nittel, S., 2006: Ad-hoc Shared-ride Trip Planning by Mobile Geosensor Networks. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 20 (8): 899–916.
  • Raubal, M.; Winter, S.; Tessmann, S.; Gaisbauer, C., 2007: Time Geography for Ad-Hoc Shared-Ride Trip Planning in Mobile Geosensor Networks. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 62 (5): 366–381. (Best Paper Award 2007; U. V. Helava Award 2008)

Project participants, cooperations and links

The project follows up an international collaboration with Silvia Nittel (USA) and Martin Raubal (USA). The original idea came out of a discussion with Monika Sester (Germany).

The project collaborates with the ARC Network for Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing (ISSNIP), and participates in the Rowden White Sensor Network Lab.